Collaborative Design Is Critical For AI

The trope “there’s an app for that” is quickly becoming “there’s an AI for that.” Want to assess the narrative quality of a story? Disney’s got an AI for that. Got a shortage of doctors but still need to treat patients? IBM Watson prescribes the same treatment plan as human physicians 99% of the time. Tired of waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish writing Game of Thrones? Rest easy, because a neural network has done the hard work for him.

But is all this rapid-fire progress good for humanity? Elon Musk, our favorite AI alarmist, recently took down Mark Zuckerberg’s positive outlook on AI, dismissing the latter’s views as “limited”. Whether you’re in Camp Zuck (“AI is awesome”) or Camp Musk (“AI will doom us all”), one fact is clear: with AI touching all aspects of our lives, intelligent technology needs deliberate design in order to reflect and serve human needs and values.